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Climate Change

The Climate Change LEADS Project: Increasing resilience in coral reefs and the people who depend on them

WWF’s Climate Change LEADS Project (Linking Environmental Analysis to Decision Support), which is being funded by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and the Batchelor Foundation, is working to enhance resilience in the highly valuable and vulnerable coral ecosystem of the Florida Keys and South Florida by bringing together concerned people, resource managers, and researchers in an informed dialogue to explore ways of adapting coral reef conservation for climate change. This project is engaging reef neighbors and users, marine and social science professionals, natural resource managers, and decision makers at the local, state and federal levels to explore the relationships between local environmental conditions (water quality, local temperature variation, etc.) and coral bleaching. Its goal is to develop conservation strategies that take advantage of beneficial patterns in the local marine environment that correspond with resilient corals. Climate change is already impacting coral reefs in Florida and the future of these beautiful and beneficial resources depend on local conservation efforts that protect resilient and vulnerable but “valuable” coral reefs, while we also work on reducing local, U.S., and global carbon dioxide emissions.

Developing New Tools for Reef Managers
One of the innovative products of the Climate Change LEADS Project will be a geographic information system (GIS) based dynamic and interactive mapping tool that anyone can use to explore patterns in environmental conditions that relate to reef resilience.  Successful coral reef conservation requires spatial and temporal information at appropriate scales. The Florida Keys marine environment has been extensively studied by numerous researchers over the years, but the findings of these diverse studies have not been well integrated in the past, and their data has not yet been applied to pressing questions associated with climate change. By integrating complementary datasets in one “geodatabase,” the Climate Change LEADS Project is beginning to address some of these new questions, and to integrate past knowledge into a single, comprehensive database. A web-based version of this dynamic tool which will provide an easy and accessible way for anyone to explore results, and will be available Fall of 2008. A stand-alone version that includes compiled data and GIS databases will be available shortly thereafter for more complex exploration.

Map of the South Florida showing the patterns of water temperature overlaid with the Summer 2005 bleaching data obtained from the Florida Reef Resilience Project (FRRP) through the Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) project administered by The Nature Conservancy.
© WWF Florida Program

Actions To Date:

  • WWF initiated a climate change campaign on the impacts to Florida and the Florida Keys which included: free lectures, a panel discussion on climate change impacts to the Florida Keys, and free showings of “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The 11th Hour.”  Some events were staged individually, others were included in a week long climate change education event in the Florida Keys.
  • WWF introduced concepts of reef resilience and climate change to stakeholders in the Florida Keys, and collected their input about the informational needs of reef “users”— boaters, recreational and commercial fishers, charter and guide fishers, divers, and dive boat operators who “use” the reef for recreation or profit.  Four workshops were held in the upper, middle, and lower Keys and staged as “Reef Resilience Week.”  WWF also organized a series of stakeholder workshops in partnership with TNC to explore the value, threats to, and management needs of Florida's coral reefs.
  • WWF participated in a series of lecture series, scientific conferences, workshops, and community activities to explain climate change impacts, coral reef resilience concepts, and to highlight WWF’s climate adaptation work and the Climate Change LEADS Project.
  • WWF is working with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC) along with other “user group” organizations to draw attention to climate change impacts to Florida’s reefs.
  • WWF is helping to establish critical strategies and recommendations on how to best manage Florida’s Reefs to protect them from climate change impacts.  We brought together more than 150 managers, scientists and users to discuss reef resilience and climate change at the Florida Reef Resilience Conference 2008: Coping with Climate Change (jointly hosted with TNC), and are currently synthesizing conference results and findings.

What does resilience mean for coral reefs and climate change?
For a coral reef—or any other ecosystem—resilience has three main components:

  1. Resistance: the ability of corals to resist negative impacts of stress
  2. Tolerance: the ability of corals that suffer negative impacts to rebound and live
  3. Recovery: the replacement of dying corals with new corals instead of with a different type of organism such as macroalgae

Coral assemblages that are more “resilient” are better able to resist, tolerate, or recover from climate change stresses, including coral bleaching caused by high water temperatures, in a way that maintains their key ecosystem functions and processes.  “Resilient” corals are most likely to survive for future resource use and enjoyment.

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